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CHAPTER 1
Daria sat tenselyin the mission briefing room, waiting for Jack Driscoll, the owner of Shield Security, to arrive. She groaned to herself, her hands damp as she opened her laptop, getting ready to discuss her forthcoming mission. Her left thigh ached and she shifted to relieve the tension in it. Three knife wounds had been sliced into it as she’d fought for her life against the Taliban soldier who had tried to kill her with his curved dagger. Daria pushed the visceral memories away. They haunted her nightly. She couldn’t allow them to cloud her thoughts now. Jack was giving her a chance to retain her position as a security contractor at Shield, after she’d refused to be a sniper any longer.
Her throat closed with tension as she swept her long, thick black braid between her shoulder blades. The early May spring air was welcome to the Alexandria, Virginia region. Daria wore a bright-red long-sleeved cotton pullover, and her black leather jacket hung on the back of her chair. Her leather boots, a matching black, were wet due to the Spring rains coming and going in the area. She fiddled with opening her work laptop, moving the cursor to the mission tab on the toolbar. Was she ready for a mission after what had happened to her four months earlier?
Daria didn’t know, but the psychiatrist who worked at Shield, Dr. Kate Armstrong, felt she was ready for some kind of low-level mission to get her back in the saddle once more. She hated that her fingers trembled as she pushed a few errant strands of hair off her furrowed brow. Her hands had always been steady as a rock before she’d nearly died on that Afghanistan op. Daria tried to control her breathing. Any moment now, Jack would enter. She had worked for two years with SHIELD as a sniper and had always done a good job, had always been successful on her missions.But not that last one.Her spotter partner, Melissa Andrews, had been stabbed to death during the botched mission, and Daria had barely survived it herself. Guilt ate at Daria. Why the hell hadn’t she paid closer attention to her instincts? When Jack had told them there was perishable intel from a nearby village located by the Af-Pak, Afghanistan-Pakistan, border, and that they were to take out an HVT, high value target, there, Daria hadn’t felt good about it, but hadn’t spoken up. Two days after building their hide to wait for the Al-Qaeda HVT to cross the border, they’d been attacked one night by five Taliban soldiers with knives.
“No…,” she whispered fiercely beneath her breath, shutting her eyes. Kate had taught her that when the memories came slamming back, when the adrenaline started to course through her veins, to start taking slow, even breaths. Kate had offered to give her anti-anxiety medication, but Daria hated the thought of being drugged up. She would handle this on her own, or else. Everything else in her life had been hard and challenging. The attack she’d survived was just one more thing she had to struggle through.
The door quietly opened.
Daria’s eyes snapped open as Jack Driscoll entered the room. He gave her a slight smile of welcome, his sharpened gaze on her. He was six feet tall, as lean as his military nickname, ‘Jaguar’, implied, and moved with the silence that only an ex-Navy SEAL could pull off. He was dressed in a bright Hawaiian shirt and ivory Chinos and wore a pair of Merrill hiking boots, a favorite of some SEALs. Jack, as always, appeared casual. He nodded to Daria and pulled out the chair at the other end of the polished maple table that gleamed with gold highlights. His black hair was military short, emphasizing his oval face and strong chin. There was nothing soft about Driscoll and Daria had always appreciated that he ran SHIELD like the military: Well-disciplined and organized. His employees, for the most part, had been handpicked from the various branches of military service.
“Hey,” Jack said, sitting down, “good to see you back here, Daria. How are you feeling?”
She wanted to tell him the truth, that she was unsure about any mission, still feeling so raw and uncertain. She’d pushed and begged and pleaded with Kate to certify her ready for some kind of low impact mission. Daria was slowly going crazy in her two story cabin outside the city, as her physical body healed from the massive damage done to her left thigh. The walls were closing in on her. Shehadto be distracted and a mission would sure as hell accomplish that. But if Kate, and especially Jack, knew this truth of why she was here, sitting in the briefing room, neither would approve her ready to return to mission status.
“I’m fine, Jack.” Daria forced a smile. “Feels good to be back here, frankly. I’m ready.” All lies of various colors and intensity. She saw him gauge her, open his laptop and turn it on. Jack was renowned to have an almost psychic ability to look through a person and see their real mental and emotional state, as well as their intent. Could she fool him? Would Kate’s written approval be enough?
“How’s the leg doing?” he asked, looking up over the top of his computer at her.
“Really good.”
“I see here you’ve finished the physical therapy portion on it,” he said, pointing to the screen, looking over her medical evaluations.
“Yes.”
“Still tender? Hurt a little when you put a lot of stress on it?”
Daria wasn’t going to lie about that. “Yes, but a hot bath or shower cures the stiffness afterward. No problem.”
“I see Kate’s released you from your psych eval, for duty.”
Nodding, her mouth going dry, Daria said, “I’m more than ready to get back to work, Jack. I’m climbing the walls. I’m not used to being put out to pasture like this.”
He gave her a thoughtful look and nod. “Yeah, but this is the first time you’ve been wounded and almost died, Daria. Sometimes, Type A operators, like ourselves, want to try and bounce back too fast from such an experience.”
Stomach clenching, Daria held his incisive look. She could feel Jack’s almost psychic energy piercing her mind and heart. She had one hand beneath the table, resting on her right thigh, finger curved into her palm. “I’m ready,” she said abruptly, as if daring him to disagree with her. Because, if Jack smelled any weakness in her, she knew he’d take her off whatever mission he had in mind for her. And she’d be forced to pace rooms, climb walls, and want to scream, unable to stand the cascade of memories that she couldn’t escape. If she had a mission, she knew the past would haunt her less. She’d be focused on something else. Distracted. And she was desperate to avoid all the emotional pain and horrifying memories of that attack. Especially the loss of Melissa, which she held herself personally responsible for. She had been the sniper and Melissa, her spotter. It had been her duty to keep her spotter alive and safe. But she hadn’t. And now, Melissa was dead. Would she ever get Melissa’s screams out of her head? Daria didn’t think so, but would give her right arm if they would stop waking her up every night.
There was a knock on the door. Jack lifted his chin, calling out, “Come in…”
Confused, Daria stared at the opening door.
“Ah, here’s Alex and Lauren…,” and Jack gestured toward the married couple as they entered the room.
Alex Kazak shut the door behind him. He sat down next to his wife, Lauren Parker-Kazak, across the table from Daria.
Daria smiled, happy to see them. She was Ukrainian by birth and so was Alex. Ever since she’d come to Shield, Alex had been a guiding force, like a big teddy-bear brother to her. And Lauren, who was the chief sniper instructor at Shield, ran the program for those entering the civilian security company. Both had taken her under their wings, and she felt warmth combined with happiness spread through her chest by their mere presence. “Hey, nice to see you two here. I didn’t know you were coming to this briefing.”
Alex grinned and laid his arm across the back of Lauren’s chair. “Jack asked us to be here.” He gave Jack a curious look. “We do not know why yet. What do you have in store for Daria?” he asked his boss.
Jack gave a faint smile in their direction, waiting for both of them to open up their laptops so the briefing could begin. “Oh… something.”
Snorting, Lauren said, “Beware whenever Driscoll says ‘something,’ Daria. It always means an off-the-wall mission.”
“I’m more than ready for one,” she assured Lauren.
Alex gave Daria a warm smile. “You look good this morning.”
